Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 88262 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 441(@200wpm)___ 353(@250wpm)___ 294(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88262 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 441(@200wpm)___ 353(@250wpm)___ 294(@300wpm)
Heat flooded my body. I almost felt dizzy. My cock started to harden now, some sick reaction to the intense adrenaline that had been surging through me all night.
I wasn’t turned on. Not a fucking chance in hell.
Or maybe that was a lie, a thought I wished I could believe.
But apparently my body responded in strange ways when I was full of one single, pure, burning fucking inferno of certainty:
I am never, ever going to let you under my skin, because I can tell it’s exactly what you want.
That was the only true power I had over a man like him.
Denial.
He was in Bestens. The town I loved so much. On my family’s property, in my barn. And he’d have to kill me before I let him ruin a single one of those things for me.
“Just take my whiskey and go,” I told him, keeping my voice plain and steady. “You won’t hurt me, and you won’t fuck me. Got it.”
My heart still slammed in my chest as I watched him walk through the open front door.
He turned back and met my eyes from under the brim of his hat.
“I never said I won’t,” he told me, his eyes flicking downward and widening a little, a satisfied look landing on his face. “Might want to change the sweatpants, by the way.”
I tore my gaze away from him, looking down to see that the outline of my hard cock was obvious through my light grey sweatpants.
There was a little spot of precum, leaking through the fabric at the tip.
My cheeks flared with heat. A potent mix of rage and embarrassment shot through me, like I was caught, pinned to the ground all over again. My dick had always had a mind of its own, and right now was the worst possible time for it to be doing that.
No, no, fucking no.
The door slammed behind Draven.
And when I looked back up, he was gone.
Chapter 2
Draven
He’s lying down with half of his face in the grey-brown dust.
Next to his cheek, there’s a footprint-shaped shadow in the earth that my own boot made a few moments ago.
I take off my cowboy hat and gaze down at it, holding my own dark halo in my hands. There’s only a little bit of blood on the brim. Barely visible on the black felt.
When I crouch down beside his unconscious figure, I reach out and put my fingers to his nostrils. Check if he’s breathing.
Knocked out cold like this, he looks frail and fallible. The sweeping mountains behind my estate are bathed in grey, the fog rolling in along the basin and promising to stay through the night.
It could almost look like the backdrop of a play:
The Montana mountain range.
My endless ranch land under the darkening light at dusk.
The body.
The weapon: just fists and the fat trunk of a nearby tree.
And me. The villain.
But this is cold and bloody and the definition of a mess. A little bit too real to be theater. The truth is that I hadn’t even been trying to hurt him. Retaliation doesn’t always work that way, and all I’d wanted was to make things right.
I feel his pulse at his wrist as his heartbeat limps along, still going, and I know I might be making the biggest mistake I’ve ever made.
My land.
My problem.
My fault.
One more bad thing to follow me into my dreams. One more wrong choice etched onto my soul forever.
But the one thing I don’t feel, even a little?
Regret.
That’s how I know I’m a monster. And I don’t mind that, either.
I drop his arm back onto the ground. Stand tall. Put my black hat back where it belongs. Not like a halo, but like an ink-black crown.
This mistake won’t stop me from protecting what’s important. Nothing will.
The worst thing about Tennessee, so far, was the lack of violence.
I’m not a total psychopath. It’s not as if I need to see bones break every night, watch somebody get punched so hard their whole face becomes a bruise, or have someone beg me to sink my cock deep into their throat solely because they’d rather please me than breathe.
Mmm. Maybe that’s more of a craving than a need.
I just wanted to feel something.
Sometimes, the road to feeling something takes… a lot. A lot of desire, a lot of pain. Both. Always both.
The second worst thing about Tennessee, though?
I was about to become a homeowner here.
I was standing in front of a small house, afternoon light glinting off a broken windowpane on the front.
The advertisement for the place described it as an “adorable fixer-upper that just needs a fresh coat of paint!”
I surveyed the property now from under the brim of my hat.
The house was single-level, with weathered red siding on the exterior that needed a lot more than just a fresh coat of paint. There were a few acres of unkempt land around it that smelled like dry grass and dust. The sun came in at an angle, forming long shadows in the swaying green grass surrounding the home.